


A Lingering Suspicion of Suspects

by Solitarysynonym



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 04:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16527104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solitarysynonym/pseuds/Solitarysynonym
Summary: A brief glimpse into how things are going for Sour Cream, Buck Dewey, Jenny Pizza, and Sadie Miller around the time of Letters to Lars.Some Buck/Jenny/Sour Cream and Sadie thinking about how she feels about Lars, although he is still very much in space.





	A Lingering Suspicion of Suspects

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soggywarmpockets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soggywarmpockets/gifts).



Sour Cream wanted to sleep for as much of the day as he possibly could. Buck, despite appearances, was a morning person. It drove Sour Cream a little off the wall sometimes when he'd gotten to sleep maybe an hour before after a late night DJing a club plus a long commute back to sleep-bound Beach City and, with the dawn, here came Buck. Vidalia, his mom, was no help at all. As much as she tried to be supportive of his chosen life path, she, an early riser herself, enjoyed seeing her sleepy-eyed son rousted out of bed when the day had barely gotten started. Sometimes Buck arrived early enough that Sour Cream could wave farewell to Yellowtail when he left to fish. 

Buck would arrive, usually let in by Yellowtail or Vidalia, and would yank the covers off of Sour Cream or just sit on his bed and monologue until the inevitable took place and Sour Cream accepted consciousness. 

Jenny Pizza was made of sterner stuff. Then again she had more practice too in resisting the morning call of a day bird as she and her twin sister Kiki had shared a room since time out of mind and neither of them were willing to put up with Buck barging in at dawn to hear about his latest musing or plan. Sour Cream had his music, Jenny the family business, and Buck had the antithesis of the family business. Beyond that, they had each other. 

Some nights Jenny came to Sour Cream's shows and gave him a ride home. Sometimes she let him stay over and offered Sour Cream the sanctuary of the Pizza couch. It kept Buck at bay but did nothing to prevent Nanefua waking him to help with deboning fish. 

The best nights, all three of them spent all night together chasing shooting stars or counting waves or helping Sour Cream with beats or Buck with his latest idea or at clubs to hear Sour Cream's sets or to see a new performer that Jenny was over the moon for. Sour Cream liked it best when he and his two best friends crashed at whichever house they ended up at, their respective families long since resigned to their inseparability. 

Sadie joined their idle playing and suddenly they were Sadie Killer and the Suspects, with shows to plan and sets to arrange. They had songs to write and costumes to make. Sadie began to let her guard down around them enough to joke and slouch and stop worrying so much about her pile of stuffed animals that were by far the comfiest seat Sour Cream had ever experienced. 

\-----

Buck rarely slept. As the Mayor, Bill Dewey had been up and about the house, making signs or shirts or other gear and practicing his speeches and checking and rechecking his schedule. Buck was sometimes dragged in to consult or serve as an audience and give feedback over a particular turn of phrase or a new slogan. Mayor Dewey did not understand Buck's Art. 

After Nanefua won the election, former-Mayor Dewey haunted their house in between attempts to find some purpose in his life now that he no longer had a reason to rehearse speeches or create pamphlets. Buck, accustomed to far more time to himself, escapes the house more and more, spending time over at Sour Cream's or at Fish Stew Pizza or in the old warehouse working on his Next Big Thing. Sometimes he goes over to the car wash for a guitar lesson or two from Mr. Universe the Guitar Dad. 

Being a part of Sadie Killer and the Suspects gave him a direction and a stable creative output that really satisfied his needs. Sadie's drive inspired him to focus the way only thwarting his father's nonsensical campaigns had done before. With Sadie at their head, Buck could see their group going places. 

\-----

Jenny Pizza loved when things were happening. She loved her family. She loved the music. She loved her friends. She loved performing on stage. She loved watching Sour Cream perform. She loved that delivering pizzas meant that she got to drive the pizza car all around town to see what other people were up to. 

Having a twin meant never really being alone, even when your twin was as similar to you as day was to night. She and Kiki had their own ways of negotiating as they navigated around each other throughout the day. Kiki had been speaking up more of late and Jenny appreciated that. She missed Nanefua always being around but she was proud of her Nanefua for becoming the mayor and taking it as seriously as everyone living in the alien-riddled town of Beach City needed her to be. 

Jenny had often felt that she and Nanefua had absorbed all of her dad's and twin's abilities to have fun and even Nanefua was a hard worker. Jenny sometimes wondered if she was the space alien of her driven and focused family. 

Sadie came into their lives and gave them direction, a bright determined light to guide them on. They became Sadie Killer and the Suspects, booking shows and getting gigs, the shy and avoidant donut girl coming out of her box and showing herself to be fierce and driven. Her determination showed Jenny that Jenny could be driven too, she just hadn't had anything to focus on. 

\-----

Sadie had never wanted to be the lead singer of a band, let alone a band made up of the Cool Kids. The more she got to know them, though, the more they were just Sour Cream and Buck and Jenny. She stopped thinking about how jealous Lars would be of her crashing on Buck's couch after a long practice or the four of them piled into the back of Mr. Universe's band to go to a gig. Without the Big Donut to open every morning she had to find her own reasons to wake up in the morning in spite of Lars being lost in deep space. 

She missed him. Of course she did. Steven promised to keep Lars updated and brought her back news of his space adventures that made Sadie wonder if any of them could be real. She trusted Steven, of course she did, but some of these adventures were downright ridiculous sounding. If she hadn't seen the things she'd seen.... Well... he was alive. He was alive and far outside the gravity of their home planet and there was noething she could do to bring him home. 

Sadie sang. Sadie maintained the boundary that kept her mother at a comfortable distance from the creative heart of the group and found that she really could like performing when it was on her own terms. Dressing as a ghost and singing for a crowd thrilled her in a way she hadn't thought possible. 

Sadie watched with nebulous envy when Buck or Sour Cream or Jenny would absently hold hands or lean against each other. She was happy for them, of course she was. The three of them had been a unit for as far back as she could remember. That they were together seemed like the only natural extension of that, even if none of them had ever bothered to formalize it in so many words. They had their own lives, but when they were in the same place... their body language heaved a big sigh of relief. Sadie found it fascinating how rarely they had to ask each other for things, behaving like a six armed three headed creature. Jenny would say something unrelated to being thirsty and Buck would get up and bring her a water without her asking. Sour Cream would hand Buck a glue gun with no words passing between them. That wasn't to say they didn't talk. They talked constantly, but the sense that under the surface of the conversation was a deep ocean of friendship and connection stretching back into the past and forward into the future in an unbroken line made Sadie a little wistful. 

Despite her slight envy and her longing for the return of her own best friend, Sadie was amazed by how readily they accepted her into their group. She, the latecomer, became the lead singer, the group bearing her new name of Sadie Killer and everything happened so fast. She wondered if this could have carried so much if the three of them hadn't been a cohesive unit so comfortable in itself that it could welcome her into itself without a problem. 

Sadie loved Lars and had for a very long time. Being around him was rarely... comfortable. At the best of times he was touchy and prickly, liable to lash out or whine at any given moment. With Buck and Jenny and Sour Cream.... Sadie felt safe. She felt trusted and appreciated with no need for shows of how cool they were or how standoffish they could be. She wondered, often, if that was Lars' problem and why he'd had such a hard time getting to know them. The three of them were genuine and, above all, they were kind. They took care of each other and sought to enjoy themselves and savor life to the fullest. There was teasing, but there was love. 

Sadie couldn't wait to invite Lars to a show. From what Steven said, he'd matured a lot out there. He'd died briefly for one thing and Sadie... Well she wasn't the same person anymore either. Donut Girl no longer. She wasn't just Sadie Miller, too afraid to express her feelings She wouldn't trap him on an island to force him to take a vacation. She wouldn't let him push her away with his own uncertainty. She loved him and she wanted to have that deep connection she saw in every movement of the trio when she was with them. 

Maybe Lars would be content to be a roadie. Or a groupie. 

Sadie smiled to herself and finished applying her eye makeup. Another show tonight, and Mr. Universe seemed very encouraged by how well the shirts Buck had made were selling at these shows. Sadie saw familiar faces and unfamiliar ones wearing their shirts, singing along with their songs. She'd never wanted to be a rock star but, now that she was here, she was going to shine bright as a sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Day four of my piecemeal NaNoWriMo in the form of various works of fanfiction. This one goes out to Soggywarmpockets!


End file.
